Cambodia: Day 2

A Temple at a distance

Another awesome tree!

Cambodian Siestas

The next day we’d planned to wake up at 7:45 so we could get an ‘early’ start on the next day of temples and whatever else Siem-Reap had to offer. We had a delicious breakfast of fresh local fruits (white dragon fruit, juicy yellow mango, ripe banana’s and green melon), covered in creamy yogurt with toasted oats, sunflower seeds and raisins. We drank hot ginger tea and fresh king coconut. A big breakfast to set us up for our first full day in Cambodia.

A glimpse of orange

A very sweet little girl

We first made our way to ‘the river of a thousand lingums’, we had to walk uphill for 1800m to this rather average stream with a lot of round shapes carved into the stone and a depiction of shiva and the gods on one side of a huge rock. This water was believed to be holy water, and the king would swim in it to cure him of his lepracy – i cheekily reached over the rope blocking off the stream and splashed a little on my hands and arms, if this was holy water there was no chance i was missing its benefits!

Glutinous vegetarian dumplings

We walked down passed deep and shallow caves in which monks used to sit and meditate, the crumbling ceilings looked a bit dangerous to repeat this but the thought of meditating in these caves by a running waterfall was lovely. We stood by the waterfall for a while, soaking in the fresh energy, before descending back to where we’d started. Our tummy’s were grumbling so we stopped at a restaurant and ate fried morning glory (a lovely crisp green vegetable) with white rice and minced pork omelette. We had two more temples to get through and as awful as it sounds, the thought of more temples wasn’t too exciting as the excitement slightly wears off after about 7.

Foetus eggs :s

The lingum's in the river

The temples were beautiful, one was situated in a jungle that was hidden surrounded by a reservoir and cornered off by four big stone elephants – it was beautiful, but returning back to the guest house for a rest was lovely too.

Chilling on a tree

 Skyping with my boyfriend brought back a sense of home and I enjoyed reciprocating what i could remember from the experiences of the day – the great thing about exploring is there’s always interesting stories to tell. That evening we went for a Khmer meal again, we hadn’t tired of the food yet and wanted to get as much in while we could! We ate a delicious set of food served in a round bamboo basket with different sections consisting of about 8 choices, eggplant with pork, amok fish salad, sweet beef, rice, spring rolls, satay, the list went on. Dessert wasn’t necessary as the sweetness of all of the food still resonated on our palettes.

Over-exposed by the waterfall

The delicious Khmer meal

That evening we lay in bed and watched ‘Julie and Julia’, as much as i love being outdoors and active, bumming around in bed is so nice! Any movie with a focus on food is one to watch, and ‘Julie and Julia’ was much enjoyed. I loved the fact that it was a true story also, there’s something nice knowing that what you’re watching actually happened and isn’t just another Hollywood fantasy. It also inspired me to write this blog – thanks Julie.


Recipe of the day: Fresh Khmer spring rolls
http://theyoungrens.com/blog/casa_de_youngren/recipe-sunday/recipe-sunday-khmer-spring-rolls/